


make a list of things you need, leave it empty

by livisgay



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Adulthood is so hard, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, and all your favorite tropes, and so is leaving your abusive husband
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 07:33:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11481630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livisgay/pseuds/livisgay
Summary: On Friday, Aaron asks Robert to get out of the Mill.On Sunday evening, Robert moves back in.On Monday morning, Aaron and Adam drive out of Emmerdale.(or: Aaron and Adam decide to deal with their respective break ups by roadtripping accross the UK. Obviously, they fall in love along the way.)





	make a list of things you need, leave it empty

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for this chapter: some mentions of Aaron's self harming + Robert violating Aaron's boundaries and taking his silence as consent.
> 
> (written before tonight's episode)

On Friday, Aaron asks Robert to get out of the Mill.

On Sunday evening, Robert moves back in.  

Aaron just stares at a point on the floor as his husband puts his bag down on the staircase, sets his keys on the counter and sits down their stupid uncomfortable couch, looking all determined and sad and pleading. “I’m not letting you do this, Aaron. I know this mess is my fault but we love each other and we can work through it, we can talk about it.” Robert grabs his hands, looks up at him with watery eyes. He looks like a mess. He’s wearing that stupid worn out tee-shirt he stole from Aaron and only puts on when he’s sick, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in three days.

Aaron looks at him and feels like throwing up.

“I love you, I love you so much Aaron, I want to fight for us. We… we can go to therapy, I’ll do anything, just don’t give up on us.” He’s crying now, openly crying, tears sliding down his perfect cheekbones as he slips his hands up Aaron’s arms, around his shoulder, burrows his head in Aaron’s neck as he crushes them in a desperate embrace.

“I missed you so much, Aaron, just let me move back in, please.”

Aaron stands wordless in his darkening living room and lets Robert cling to him until the tears on his shoulder stop, until Robert pulls back and grabs Aaron’s face in his hands, brings their foreheads together, whispers “You and me, we’re forever, okay?” and Aaron feels like dying, like ripping his own skin would feel better than this —his husband’s hands tenderly framing his face, touching him, burning him; his husband voice in his neck, I  _want_ _messed up forever with you, I do I do i do._

Aaron doesn’t want messed up forever anymore. Aaron wants calm and normal and right now.

Aaron wants to close his eyes and go to bed, sleep for five hundred hours and wake up in an empty bed and finally feel like he can breathe.

_You can’t do this_ , he wants to say, _you can't do this it's not fair_ , but Robert does things anyway, blowing through people’s lives like a hurricane, and you don’t resist a hurricane. You can close the doors and windows and blinds but the hurricane comes anyway, blows through all your defenses like they never existed, and all you can do is sit in the dark and close your eyes, give up all resistance and then hope something is still standing.

The only way out is through, so Aaron lets Robert grab his hand and tug him along, through the living room and up the stairs, lets his husband push him down on the bed until they’re both lying down, lets Robert wrap an arm around his back and bury his face in his neck and whisper _I love yous_ until the hurricane calms down and Robert falls asleep and Aaron can finally lie awake, silent and unmoving, staring at the ceiling until sleep overtakes him

He's still standing. 

________________

 

When Robert wakes in the morning, he’s all soft eyes and suggestive smiles, his face the perfect mixture of hurt and contrite as Aaron shoves his hand away from his thigh and barely responds to his morning kiss. _It’s okay_ , he says, _I know we have a lot to work on_ , presses a kiss to Aaron’s cheek and goes down to make breakfast. Robert is going to be Good Dutiful Husband today, Aaron knows —he’s going to come down and Robert will press of cup of tea in his hand, will have started the laundry and the dishwasher, will run out the door with a kiss to Aaron’s hair and a promise to meet up for lunch, for tea, for drinks, and he’ll make a disappointed face when Aaron turns him down, plays the part of the Grumpy Resentful Husband. Their script is isn’t the best, but at least it’s there, reassuring in its familiarity —a guide for Aaron to follow, a reminder that he’s done this before, at least, so he can do it once more.

So Aaron gets up and Aaron follows the script: he showers and tugs on a tee-shirt, he goes downstairs and welcomes Robert’s cup of tea with a soft smile, he sits down at the table and pretends to read the newspaper while Robert flutters around the room, helpful and eager, somehow both accommodating and confident. He’s overly chatty, though, which means he must still be nervous. “I think this is good, you know. We’re making process. I have a meeting this morning but d’you wanna have lunch at the bar later on? Give us a chance to talk.”

Aaron nods and smiles, closes his eyes and doesn’t flinch when Robert leans down and presses lips against his temple.

The door of the Mill slams shut and Aaron is alone now. All alone in this house that barely feel like his, this house his husband cheated on him in, this house bought with the money of a man he hated, all alone with his thoughts, and Aaron takes a breath and makes himself calm down, makes himself rince his mug, clean up the breakfast table, brush his teetch, everything as normal, because this is a normal day except for the part where it isn't. 

This is a normal day, except for the part where Aaron got up last night at around 3 am, slid out from under his husband's arm and sneaked downstairs and paced and paced and paced in his living room, trying to think the panic attack away, until he was in front of the closet in the hallway, the one where they put everything that doesn't fit anywhere else —the winter coats and the iron board and some filling cardboard boxes and Aaron's old gym bag.

The bag isn't in the closet now. The bag is under the bed, empty and waiting and out of Robert's eyes and Aaron is a terrible, terrible coward but at least he's still someone, and not this shape of a person he can barely stand anymore, the one whose body he's been inhabiting for weeks, walking around the village like an empty shell, dead eyes and forced smiles and bruised fists.

It's too hard a job, pretending to be a functional human being, prentending to be a good person who stays and forgives and doesn't wish unborn babies dead. Aaron can't pretend, can't lie anymore, and Aaron can't make Robert leave either.  

He is good at leaving though, is good at giving up —Robert's told him enough times before.  

His hands are shaking as he grabs a handful of tee-shirts and unceremoniously shoves them in the bag. There’s another panick attack waiting at the back of his mind, he knows, his heart beating too hard in his chest as he adds a handful of pants, trousers, two hoodies, hurries to the bathroom to add a toothbrush, a towel, a blanket from the cupboard. For now he ignores it. There’s some pictures of him and Liv, and him and his mom, in his bedside table, and Aaron shoves them in there too without looking at them, along with the envelope with one hundred pounds in cash, that Cain’s always told him any Dingle should have on the go, _in case you ever need to run, you know_. Cain probably meant, like, from the police, not from the husband Aaron married with opened eyes and despite everyone’s warnings, but hey, at least now Aaron’s got a couple days of advance before Robert probably tracks him down from his cash withdrawals, the way they do in these stupid cop shows they used to watch when they were still pretending to be a functional couple, and now Aaron is hyperventilating, breath catching in his throat, and this can’t happen, this can’t happen, because Aaron still has stuff to do.

His hands are still shaking as he slings the bag over his shoulder and runs downstairs and to the kitchen. Robert can’t drink tap water like a normal person, which means they have two packs of these stupidly expensive water bottles under the sink, so he grabs one of them, along with a pack of beer because Aaron is definitely getting drunk tonight, and then he’s out the door and shoving all of that in his boot, and then his hands are shaking so bad he can’t get the key in to close the front door, and Aaron close his eyes and breathe, counts to ten, wishes he was five hundred miles from here. 

Thinks about giving up, about just going back upstairs and crashing on his bed, pulling the covers over his head and lying their for a day, ignoring everything -his cheating husband and that stupid baby and the anger in his guts and the voice in his head telling him to just run run run.

Instead Aaron turns the key in the lock, once, twice, and then turns around.

Instead he watches the Mill retreat back into his rear mirror, fading in the background as he drives toward the scrapyard, until his house is just a blur in the distance, like something that barely existed, something that was never really there.

Something that's easy to leave.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so  
> 1\. this is my first fic and English isn't my first language which means this will probably vary a lot in pacing / language / style / general quality so please just bear with me
> 
> 2\. google maps is my only source of information re: road tripping in the uk. I'm not even sure i know where exactly emmerdale village is supposed to be. In other words: aaron and adam are taking a road trip accross the fictional england that only exists in my head. 
> 
> 3\. robert is canonically abusive to aaron and this fic will explicitely deal with that. i won't argue about this in the comments so find something else to read if this bugs you!


End file.
